Tag Archives: kindle touch review

While I’m mostly a fan of the Kindle Touch, I’ve largely seen little reason to upgrade from the Kindle Keyboard in day to day use. The darker frame is nice, the keyboard works well for any shopping I have to do, and it has generally proven reliable for quite some time now. Since I knew I would be on the road for about a week recently, however, I decided I would give the Kindle Touch a thorough test. You never know what you might learn by trying, right?

Connectivity

One thing that surprised me was that I was generally able to get a better 3G signal through the Kindle Touch than through my Kindle Keyboard. The Keyboard model is definitely far more broken in, so I can’t necessarily count this as a side by side comparison of new devices, but I was able to get more reliable, faster connections at nearly every stage of a 3,500 mile trip with the Kindle Touch.

Screen Quality

I expected that the lighter case on the new Kindle Touch would be a pain compared to what I was used to. This was somewhat accurate. While reading in the majority of indoor lighting situations was fine with either eReader, I noticed that it was much easier to use my Kindle Keyboard in bright sunlight. I’m sure this was an optical illusion rather than actual quality differences, but the lighter frame around the screen left the Kindle Touch looking washed out in truly bright light.

Reading Experience

Quite frankly, I love the physical page turn buttons. I still get annoyed at Amazon for removing them. That is literally my only complaint about the general reading experience on the Kindle Touch, though. It is quick, light, easier to hold, and generally everything you want in a reading device. The preference for physical buttons aside, I will admit that after a few page turns I stopped noticing that I was having to touch the screen and things moved quite naturally. This could be a matter of my own preconceptions as much as anything.

Navigation

The place where I really appreciated having a touch screen was in PDF navigation. Things went much more smoothly than I’m used to. The same is true of in-line annotation in Kindle documents. While it is slightly faster to type on the physical keyboard, that advantage is negated by the fact that the Kindle Touch allows for quick placement of your cursor rather than a slow movement via 5-way control pad. The point here has to go to the Kindle Touch on both issues.

Battery Life

You can’t really complain about the battery life on any Kindle product. I used each of my Kindles for about 4 hours per day across a seven day period. They both still had just under half their batteries left when my drive was over. The charger that was packed could have easily been left at home.

Conclusion

My Kindle Touch is going to be seeing a lot more use. The lighter weight and smaller form made it stand out in a lot of ways and the fact that note taking was so much faster than I expected has persuaded me to make this my daily eReader. There are still many reasons to prefer the Kindle Keyboard, the keyboard among them, but it is not as clear a choice as I had expected. I will try to follow up on this in a few weeks to see if extended use is still preferable when both are available.

I got tricked by Amazon and thought the release date for the Kindle Touch was November 21 so I had mine sent to my parents’ house since I would be there for the holidays. I am just now getting to try out my new Kindle first hand, and very pleased with it so far.

As many know, the Kindle Touch was released a week early along with the Kindle Fire. Both hit the market at rock bottom prices, and well before Black Friday. That gave developers time to create apps and games for the e-reader and tablet. Reviews are good for both overall.

The Kindle Touch‘s screen has a glow like quality to it. At first I thought it might glow in the dark, but it doesn’t. It is just the big upgrade in screen quality and e-ink quality between the Kindle 2 and Kindle Touch. I decided to skip the Kindle 3 generation because when it came out, my Kindle 2 was barely 6 months old.

So far, I’m loving the compact size of the Touch, the crisp screen, and the grip on the back. My Kindle 2 seems incredibly clunky now especially because of the keyboard. The touch screen on the new Kindle works great, and I’m able to turn pages with ease. I’ve already finished one book, and adjusted the font size to where I could read it without straining my eyes.

I noticed a comment in another post about the Kindle Touch on this blog that made a good point. The Easy Reach software makes it easy to tap and move to the next page, but it can be a challenge for lefties. I am left handed, and do see that it is a little more challenging to turn pages. Amazon could probably add a next page tap on the left side like they did with the buttons in the past. That is really the only criticism I have so far.

I can hold the whole Kindle in one hand. It is about 3/4 the size of my Kindle 2. It is amazing how quickly technology can change in just two short years!

I chose the wi-fi only with special offers version, so I am also getting used to not having 3G available on a whim. It isn’t too much of a hindrance because I can access a wi-fi hotspot just about anywhere. Even if I don’t have wi-fi, I can use the USB to connect my Kindle to the computer and download the book files that way.

So, I give the Kindle Touch a thumbs up, and recommend it for anyone looking to upgrade or try a Kindle for the first time. I am a hard core reader, and I can see the e-reader holding it’s own for the foreseeable future. E-readers have the look and feel of a regular book. To me, they don’t fit in the same category as computers, tablets and smartphones. I don’t find myself looking for a break from my Kindle like I do the other gadgets.

As might be obvious based on the posted release dates at this point, it would be very unlikely for me to have a Kindle Touch handy to review right now. That’s OK! I won’t let anything as minor as that stop me. We already have some media to work with, and there’s a lot of information to be gleaned if you look for it.

The basics are still in place, of course. The display is the usual E INK Pearl screen technology that all current generation eReaders are pretty much required to have. The battery life is just as good as the Kindle 3 (or the Kindle Keyboard as we’re now supposed to refer to it I suppose) and will give users weeks or months between charges even during periods of heavy use. The connectivity includes built in WiFi and optional 3G coverage depending on which model you go with. Storage will remain more than sufficient for carrying a library worth of reading material while also allowing you to offload extra books to the Amazon servers. Whatever springs to mind when you think “Kindle” will probably be pretty accurate still.

There are obviously a few things that are new and unique to this Kindle family addition, though. The obvious one is the touch screen. It will be making use of the increasingly popular IR touch system also utilized by the competing Nook Simple Touch eReader. This avoids the problems that Sony had with their early touchscreen eReaders, where the extra layer required for the touchscreen reduced readability on the device. It also allows for the use of gloves, which many of you will be aware can be problematic on devices like the iPad unless you get specialty products to compensate.

Along with the new screen technology, Amazon has clearly sped up the refresh rate on the new Kindle. It is “optimized with proprietary waveform and font technology”, which I am taking to mean that they have worked out a process to absolutely minimize the refreshed area of the screen during each page turn. The extra speed is quite noticeable and again seems comparable to the Nook Simple Touch based on the currently available video footage.

The only other immediately obvious difference from the Kindle 3 is the physical presence of the device itself. The Kindle Touch is smaller, lighter, silver, and lacks any form of mechanical button. Everything is tied into the touchscreen, so there is no need for anything extraneous. While the new Kindle 4 without a touchscreen manages to be even smaller and lighter, this is a noticeable improvement over the Kindle 3 and will likely improve long-term reading experiences somewhat.

At a glance, this new addition to the product line is a perfect response to the competition. It is light, fast, attractive, and has a touchscreen display. I will admit that I wish there were physical page turn buttons as a matter of personal preference, but that’s hardly a deal breaking factor. Most of what makes it such an attractive deal, however, is how little they have had to change since the last Kindle. It seems to basically be a new screen on an old device.

In terms of functional differences in the software, we’re left without much right now. The EasyReach feature will partition off the screen in such a way as to make page turning more intuitive and less dependent on swiping than might otherwise be the case. That’s a nice addition.

There is also “X-Ray”. X-Ray is a feature that will allow users to quickly scan passages containing references to particular keywords while drawing upon information from Wikipedia and Shelfari. It is hard to anticipate exactly how well this will work in practice, but Amazon has proven fairly adept at making use of predictive algorithms. While I don’t believe they will be able to, as they claim, find “every important phrase in every book”, this could be a great reference tool.

Annotation may also be significantly improved by the addition of the new input. Highlighting, placing the cursor, and generally navigating in small motions is problematic on the Kindle Keyboard’s 5-way controller. It isn’t bad, but it’s too slow to be used as extensively as some may want.

I would claim that the new personal library browsing has been improved by the inclusion of a cover display shelf type of interface, but I don’t really consider this a useful feature. While for some titles it is perfectly simple to pick out their cover from the crowd, many still have not been optimized for E INK’s monochrome displays. Even more problematic is the importing of titles from other sources. If the focus of the Kindle is really going to be the reading experience, highlighting the pretty pictures should not be a major sales point.

While this is only a minor hardware and firmware improvement over the last model and competing devices, it addresses demand and gives customers access to one of the cheapest, most useful eReaders available today. Keep in mind that the Kindle platform brings huge value to the table as well with the inclusion of Whispersync, library lending(yes I know it’s new and late in coming, but it’s definitely the easiest to use at the moment now that it’s here), cloud storage, and perhaps the most impressive eBook store currently open.

So, is this a better eReader than its main competition in the US? The Nook Simple Touch is the obvious point for general comparison. Barnes & Noble took everything they learned from the original Nook, copied a few more things from the Kindle, and created a really fine eReader. I would say that the playing field has tipped slightly in Amazon’s favor, though. Not necessarily because of the superior physical properties of the device, but because the Kindle Touch brings equivalent hardware to the table and leaves the Kindle’s superior software and content to win out. This isn’t to say that a major B&N update can’t change things, but for now they might have a problem with Amazon.